


Stolen Time

by sfiddy



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Episode: s07e04 The Power of Three, Gen, TARDIS rooms, The Doctor loves the Ponds, sad doctor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-12
Updated: 2013-09-12
Packaged: 2017-12-26 09:39:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/964432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sfiddy/pseuds/sfiddy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I'm convinced that the events of The Power of Three actually occur after The Angels Take Manhattan.  Here's how it works.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stolen Time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wordslinger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordslinger/gifts), [audreyii_fic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/audreyii_fic/gifts).



She never forgot anything. From the scarves and costumes to the red trainers and bowties, from image imprints and the precise locations and time points of every lock and phase shift he’d created to the exact shade of iridescent blue-purple that glinted through the –damn her- frozen waves of Woman Wept. It was all stored here, filed away behind doors, inside rusty cabinets, and under the locked lids of trunks stowed behind curtains and sliding panels. The very nature of her existence, one that spanned across space-time, meant that a cup of tea poured in a room and walked away from would be steaming when he returned a decade later.

He loved and hated her for every scrap. 

One entire section of the TARDIS was devoted to containing his various vehicles. They magically tailored themselves to his needs whenever he called upon his garage (bespoke engineering being what it was) and the fuels never gelled, degraded, evaporated or combusted.

There was the wardrobe, a magnificent suite on its own, made more impressive by the treasures in both textile and accessory from every era of every civilization worth visiting that he’d had the chance to see so far. She was kind enough to secret some away (he didn’t need to see the crimson robes or the shredded remains of velvet again, did he?) but most of it was in touchable reach. 

The library was always impressive, not just because of its remarkable contents but because it was traditional in most cultures to revere knowledge and the places one stored information. There were plenty of cultures that still worshipped written words and to throw away a scrap of paper was a punishable crime not because of littering, but because of the damage to the potential for information conveyance. 

An entire series of connected rooms was devoted to a collection of ladders and spiral staircases, which led to his umbrellas, canes, and cases, and once you got past that room, you could find yourself surrounded by a strange gallery of fasteners. Other people had toolboxes, he had entire rooms devoted to nuts and bolts. His Ninth self spent more time in here than any other. Quite the mechanic, that one. He’d had his hands full with repairing the TARDIS after… It made one wonder how much the TARDIS was able to influence his regenerations. Had she ordered up a mechanic that time?

That persona had died with a whimper. Remarkable, considering how he’d come into existence, yet fitting as he’d changed so much. Maybe a quieter exit suited him. That certainly wasn’t the case the next time.

So many that time. He touched so many lives. It wasn’t even fair to say that, because he’d been a cannon ball, blasting his way into every place he went with the subtlety of gunpowder and the brashness of hot iron. If that was true, then he was thermonuclear now. Oddly, instead of just leaving a path of destruction on land, he left a swath of fractured people as well. 

None more broken than he, though it was probably egomaniacal just to think it.

His gadget room was well traversed now. He’d crammed the facial identifier back in its trunk and placed the voice recorders back in their case (minus the one the Silence left behind after they liquefied that particular flesh avatar.) The TARDIS had been kind enough to remove so many traces, but the things themselves were all there. But then, she kept everything, didn’t she?

The TARDIS was quiet now. Clara was asleep, worn down from living two days in the span of one and then demanding a tour of the ship. He continued to wander as he became more and more morbid, more and more macabre with himself.

He was, somewhere deep down, far too hurt to not want to hurt himself just a bit more. A reminder once in a while was good for his soul- the one he’d burned in fires of destruction and locked in time thrice over- that there were bigger things at stake than just his adventure.

There were people. To lose his companions meant one more chip flaked off his hearts. Some left quietly to do other things. Others were lost, and a few were taken. Some left deeper wounds than they knew, and some knew exactly what they were doing. 

The TARDIS knew, too. And she saved every single one.

One hallway, unmistakable for these walls never changed, it only grew longer, one door at a time, each door a preserved copy of the desktop it was torn from. He did not frequent this hallway, because one does not visit mausoleums. But then, that was the wrong term, because this wasn’t a tomb. It was a corridor of opportunity. The TARDIS, in saving everything, preserved an opportunity for him. 

In every timeline, there are major branchpoints, points at which actions could determine major events and downstream events could change on a whim. Setting your cup on the other end of the table could avert an alien invasion, if the cup in question was blocking the monitor and you saw the blip on the screen and stopped it long before they got close enough to be a problem. 

So the TARDIS had, through her wonderful, brilliant, terrible self, preserved the final timepoint where he could safely visit without damaging the events to come. 

Most he could let go, but not all. He took Susan to her favorite shops and spent the day eating ice cream until the Cloister Bell warned him he was cutting it too close, and he learned not to use all the time up. He commissioned a painting of Romana by a German Master just to prove that human art truly was superior to a scan.

He hadn’t done it in such a long while, because so many that he wanted to see were either lost behind the locks (damn him for getting so entwined with the High Council) or he simply couldn’t face them. Then there was that- were he to simply pop by with his new face, it simply wouldn’t work. Too few understood the reality that was regeneration. Sarah Jane did, but she already knew enough. She’d been burdened enough.

The doors changed from the harsh edged black and whites to the rounded shapes he has seen most recently. One door did not belong to him any longer. He had no business going in and stealing slivers of Rose away from his other self. If she’d seen any other end, even death, he’d had no compunction about waltzing in and trying to alter time itself, but that was the one ending he would not –could not- change. Some part of him was happy. It was ironic that it had to happen in a whole other universe.

Martha and Mickey were happy and had children now. They defended the Earth with metal and fire and turned around and kissed their children goodnight with the powder still in their skin. You had to admire that, even if he was a tin dog.

Walk by Donna’s door. Walk by very, very fast. 

There was one more door. Whatever there was, he begged forgiveness from it because he’d done it. He went back and stayed for a whole year. Then he went back again and took them on another adventure inside the adventure. All it took was engineering another quick walk away, or leaving them in a room for a moment and he could have another go. The cubes were still waiting, he’d checked. At this very moment they were in France in a ridiculous state room having what must be their fourth honeymoon. 

He’d made himself a master of manipulation just to have one more trip with the Ponds. So, while Clara slept, and as long as he had this face, he would continue to dip into the well, stealing what happiness he could at the expense of everything around him, and the TARDIS would continue to accommodate him. 

He loved and hated her for every single trip.


End file.
